Resistance.

Matthew 5:38-48

February 19, 2017

I.

Jesus continues with his sermon about how to live in the empire spawned by human ego-centricity and sinfulness, while being of the Kingdom of God.  He tells his disciples how to be sighted people in the world of the blind.  How to live the truth in a world of lies.  How to witness to God’s shalom or peace, in a world locked-down in human violence.

The whole ethic of Jesus is that he calls on us to be, like himself, holy and joyful losers.  In a perverted world that only values winning, profiting, gaining, and acquiring, often by any means necessary, Jesus says that true and eternal life is found in giving, donating, renouncing, and losing.  Because the more we lose of the lie that we are independent, autonomous, separate selves, the less there is within us to block and obstruct the love of God.

In a world in which it is demanded that we think only of ourselves, our family, our nation, or our race, and how we need to ban or restrict those others, Jesus is showing us that in God’s eyes there are no others.  He tells us how to live under the recognition of the truth that there are no meaningful distinctions between people and groups of people.  We are all one.  There is no “us” and “them.”  There are no “enemies” out there, really.

The key verse here is where Jesus says, “[God] makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”  If we’re going to be God’s children, disciples of Jesus need to have the same gracious and beneficent approach to all people that God has.  Everyone gets accepted and loved.  Everyone deserves our best wishes and generosity.  

We like to think of God as a great cosmic Judge, and certainly that is an element of God’s role.  But that is not a role that humans are qualified to take on themselves.  God will separate the sheep from the goats in the end.  People bring down on themselves God’s condemnation by their idolatries and injustices.  Humans habitually and chronically separate themselves from God’s love, goodness, and truth, and suffer the consequences.

But our job is to be the agents and accomplices of God’s boundless and non-prejudicial love, letting the sun and rain of blessing for the sake of life shine and pour through us into the life of all.  Even, and especially, into the lives of evildoers, enemies, and others who do harm to us.  We remember of course that Jesus forgives even those who murder him.  They don’t know what they are doing, he says.  They act out of ignorance.  They don’t earn their forgiveness by repentance; they get it as a free gift because they don’t know any better.

Evildoers may never wake up.  No matter how perversely and comprehensively people continue to do wrong, the Lord insists that we cannot respond in kind because we know the truth.  We know God’s love.  And to answer evil with evil, to fight fire with fire, to use violence against violence, would simply be a denial of what we know.  It would be, and is, a categorical rejection of Jesus.

I read last week that one-third of Americans polled said that being a Christian was important to being an American.  The only thing I will say about that is that if one-third of Americans — that is, 110 million people — actually followed Jesus, especially this part of the Sermon on the Mount, this would be a very different country, and world, indeed.  What dismays me the most is how many people appear to imagine that being a Christian has nothing do to with actually following Jesus.

II.

Jesus once again intensifies the Scriptures, which still allow a limited, regulated retribution against wrongdoers.  He says, “Forget that.  Do not violently resist an evildoer at all.  If someone hits you, steals from you, or forces you to do something, don’t just let them.  But voluntarily give them even more!”  These offenses are all the actions of powerful, privileged people — like soldiers, bosses, creditors, judges, owners, or police — abusing the weaker members of society.  These are crimes of superiors against subordinates… categories that Jesus knows are not real but invented by human leaders for their own benefit.

So Jesus’ advice is not to give these categories any reality by recognizing them or participating in them.  Don’t give them any authority over you.  Treat these people claiming to be your superiors as if they are your neighbors, friends, or family members.  Indeed, treat them as if they were children, or even as someone who doesn’t know any better, some stranger from some alien culture where they have this odd, irrational belief that violence accomplishes anything. 

That’s why he says at the end, “Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”  Treat everyone like they are someone in some kind of need.  Share what you have!  Anyone who commits an act of violence does it because they are in more pain, deep down, than you are.  You after all know God’s love; they only know a cycle of retribution, force, and deterrence.

Even if someone hits you, assume that they are the ones with the problem.  They have a mental illness, a brokenness in their own soul, a twisted and false view of the world.  Assume that they are hurting and in confusion.  The sources of violence in the human heart are shame, fear, and anger, and these are quite understandable for someone who doesn’t know any better and thinks they have no choice because that’s all they ever knew or learned.  If someone does violence to you treat them as a sick person.  Treat them as horribly damaged themselves.  

Jesus does not condone or approve of violence.  And his advice is given among equals, people who share the same experience, people who have been there themselves.  His advice comes from someone who will himself be lynched by the authorities.  Beware of anyone who gives advice they do not take themselves.  Beware of anyone who gives advice from a position of superiority, who is not themselves a victim of oppressive violence.  

III.  

Jesus is not telling people to remain in situations of domestic violence, or bullying, or war, or slavery.  And there are times when we have to intervene to prevent violence.  Jesus doesn’t even say don’t resist — the Greek word there is better translated as don’t “resist violently.”  

Our resistance, the most faithful resistance, resistance that trusts in Jesus’ words and example, is to witness to the opposite of these horrors.  Our resistance is to witness to a different way of life.  Our resistance is to say no to violence by saying yes to God’s Way of shalom.  Our resistance is refusing to acknowledge and give in to falsehood, and living instead by the truth.  Our resistance is to fashion a community together where the practices, values, teachings, and Spirit of Jesus rule.

Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”  For many, this is the heart and soul of Jesus’ teaching.  It is the summary of everything he has been saying.  A few weeks ago I heard the aphorism that if you do something expecting something else in return that’s not love; that’s business.  Jesus says the same thing.  “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”  You’re expecting a medal?  You want a commendation?  Seriously?  Everybody does that; that is not a stretch.  The least spiritual and most clueless people can handle loving those who love them.  Even dogs usually manage this.

In fact, the powers ruling the world count on us loving those who love us… and keeping love strictly limited and regulated.  But they are just as emphatic that we should not love those we don’t know, who are not part of our circle.  And enemies?  Obviously, enemies deserve our hatred.  And in case we don’t hate those they have declared to be enemies they will force us to, and if we don’t have any enemies, they will invent some for us.  Because if we didn’t have enemies they would have no one to protect us from, and our needing protection is what keeps them in power.  That’s why we are instructed to hate and fear immigrants.  That’s why we are instructed to hate and fear Muslims.  

But Jesus, in saying “Love your enemies,” means we don’t have enemies.  If we love someone they stop being an enemy.  For followers of Jesus, “enemy” is not a real category of human.  Rather, the actual enemy is whatever it is inside of us that is imagining that other people are enemies.  The enemy is the paranoid voice in our own hearts that makes us think we are, by welcoming others, exposing “our cities, homes, and lives to hostile people.”  The most dangerous enemy is the hostility in your own soul that imagines hostility and threats everywhere.

And Jesus is saying that this inner enemy, the enemy in us that creates enemies in the world, that is the enemy most in need of our love.  Because that enemy is our own broken, bruised, battered, and beaten soul.  That enemy is our fearful, angry, and ashamed inner child, who has invested much of our lives building defenses and projecting a fearsome image.  That’s the enemy within, who has tragically forgotten that he or she is made indelibly in God’s Image.  That’s the main enemy we win over and heal with love.

IV.                 

Jesus finishes chapter 5 with a famous verse.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  He is telling his disciples, including us, to be as perfect as God.  It seems like a tall order, to say the least.  I can tell you that no amount of striving will accomplish this.  It cannot be done by our will and strength.  It can only done by God.  God can make us perfect, in the sense of complete and whole, good and true.  

In AA they have a saying I am sure you have all heard: It is “Let go and let God.”  It kind of sums up that whole program… and it sums up what Jesus is saying here as well.  Following Jesus is not about striving and grasping; it’s not about effort and accomplishment and achievement; it’s not really about us doing anything.  It is about letting go.  If we let go of all the stuff we are holding on to — our self-image, our habits, our prejudices, our fears, our desires, our self-serving stories, our delusions, and so on — if we let all that go… God emerges within us.  God is everywhere.  We just have to let go of the lie that God isn’t also in us.  We are made in God’s Image!  Yet we hold on to lies — alternative facts — as if God were far off.

But letting go is so hard.

It is not so much doing something as not doing something.  It is a kind of relaxing, a kind of release, in which if we just stop holding on to all the things we think we need, we simply slide into the arms of God.  Instead of holding, we are ourselves held in infinite love, peace, and joy.

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